“I think revenge porn is probably a misnomer, because it implies that it’s about revenge and it’s about pornography,” said Karen Bentley, director of the Safety Net Australia project for the Women’s Services Network.

“Quite often it’s not about that at all — so we prefer the term image based sexual abuse, or image based sexual exploitation.”

Ms Bentley delivers technology safety training to Australian agencies and organisations that work with women experiencing or escaping gender-based violence and stalking.

She said image based assault was a new control tactic used by abusive partners, but bringing perpetrators to justice was not easy.

“So there are all those kind of international cross border jurisdictional issues that we have as well as the burden of proof,” she said.

“How do you prove who’s actually posted the image online? It’s very easy to hide your fingerprints on the internet.”

South Australian and Victoria have moved to create laws that make sharing “intimate” images without consent a crime.

NSW considering laws around doctored images

The New South Wales Government has just published a discussion paper that also looks at whether neutral images that have been photoshopped should be included in the definition.

NSW Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton said she heard first hand from victims about the profound impact revenge porn had on them.

“As a mother of a teenage daughter I do have a small insight I think into how those kind of actions that can now be taken with mobile phones so available enabling these images to be shared across phones, platforms, the internet and that’s why we must have this discussion now,” she said.

While she said there were issues around having consistent laws nationally, legislators wanted state-based laws so sharing revenge porn could be written into state criminal codes, thus making it a crime.

Take Down Notices can be issued for images of children used in Australian websites, but it is a different issue when it comes to adults or overseas websites.

That is why advocates like Ms Bentley emphasise the importance of having high security settings on social media.

” A lot of commentators will say basically well you can protect yourself by not posting your images online but … it’s not possible – you are going to have images online,” she said.